I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

It was the surprise of the political season, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. While it took until now for him to issue a full endorsement, Rove has for months been using the Journal’s op-ed page to signal his approval for the president. Just last week, in fact, he praised Obama’s work ethic, writing, “He is working a lot harder than he thought he would.”

In February, he lauded the president’s motives in establishing a new agency, saying, “Mr. Obama set up a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010 to make sure people are treated fairly.”

And last September, Rove explicitly accused his own political allies of doing voters a disservice by opposing Obama, writing, “[H]is Republican opposition puts party ahead of country.”

If there’s a reason those comments didn’t cause more of a ripple when he made them, perhaps it’s because he didn’t actually say any of these things.

That is, he did write the words I attribute to him, but in a completely different context that changes the meaning to the point where, by removing that context, I’ve inverted his sentiments by 180 degrees.

Here’s what Rove wrote, referring to a new film put out by the Obama campaign:

As for the killing of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama did what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation. Even President Bill Clinton says in the film “that’s the call I would have made.”

And here, as Sargeant notes, is what Clinton is actually quoted saying in the film (emphasis mine).

“He took the harder and the more honorable path. When I saw what had happened, I thought to myself, ‘I hope that’s the call I would have made.’”

See what he did there? See how, by taking out “I hope,” he turned it from a big-up to a put-down? Clever, right?

It’s so clever, in fact, that I suspect the Journal may want to issue a correction — just, you know, to let readers in on the joke. I emailed the paper’s editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, and its editorial features editor, Robert Pollock, to see if they have anything like that in mind. I’ll let you know if I hear back from them. [Update: A Journal spokeswoman says the paper declines comment. Update 2: An "editor's note" has been added to the column. It reads: "An earlier version of this column included an incomplete quote from Bill Clinton in the last paragraph." The quote has been restored as well.]

Meantime, here are the fuller and thus more boring versions of the Karl Rove quotes above.

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I suppose this article is a joke but I didn’t find it excessively funny because it often happens that Republicans reveal themselves as leftists.

Just to be sure, if you thought it was Rove’s case as well, it’s not. The pro-Obama quotes are only quotes in Rove’s article. He says that a pro-Obama campaign movie praises Obama but he doesn’t praise Obama himself.

Pretty much confirms what I’ve said all along: Obama is doing a great job for the Republican establishment, which is why the establishment candidates didn’t run in 2012. Instead we got a cavalcade of nutjobs … ensuring re-election.

To understand Mr Rove…we must refer to the past. There are tapes and transcripts of “dirty tricks” seminars he held in TEXAS. This was exactly the kind of publicity the Republican party did not need with clouds building over Watergate. Believe I recall that some were called “how to win in politics by dirty tricks ” However, a few months later, Bush Sr hired Rove as his special assistant at the RNC. How perfect was this? Assistant to the chairman of the Republican National Committee. ? . Mostly ROVE was a gopher. But his most important association, although he didn’t know it then, was the boss’ son, George W. That was a defining moment because not only did he change the face of the GOP when GW hired him –he changed all our lives. Debatable if it was for the better…..history will not be kind.

I am amused that the headline has been changed at least three times that I have noticed. I must admit, I liked the first one the best. Excellent article! And, as a reminder, conservatives do not have the brain capacity to understand satire or irony.

Steven, I tweaked the headline because there were a lot of readers coming in through Google News, and I wanted to make it more apparent to folks who weren’t reading carefully or maybe were only skimming the first couple paragraphs that Rove did not, in fact, endorse Obama. I hate to step on a good joke, but it’s not worth sending a lot of people off misinformed. The second tweak was just to fix a bad line break.